This invention relates to an underwater mateable coaxial splice and particularly to underwater splice connectors which mate and connect underwater directly with the ends of coaxial cable.
There are thousands of miles of SD coaxial cable in the ocean which are used for communication and data acquisition purposes. Cable breaks occur each year, usually from trawling activity. Present methods to repair the cables are usually adequate but have two serious limitations: First, the existing seafloor cable system can be repaired only by being brought to the surface for splicing. Raising a seafloor cable to the surface involves grapnelling, which can cause further damage to the cable system; and if the cable is buried, grapnelling the cable to the surface becomes very difficult and may not be possible at all without a time-consuming unburial by a submersible vehicle. Second, each time a cable is brought to the surface, as much as a few miles of slack cable must be added to the section because of the depths to which these cables are laid. This added length is cumbersome to handle, degrades system performance by increasing attenuation, and is vulnerable to future damage. As more advanced systems are installed, these limitations become increasingly undesirable. Capability to splice the cable on the seafloor is needed to overcome these limitations.